Description of Historic Place

The Old Graveyard is a Roman Catholic cemetery containing more than twenty headstones, mainly of white marble, and is located near the waterfront in Branch, Newfoundland and Labrador. The grassy cemetery lies on gently sloping, fenced land approximately 18 metres from the community’s waterfront. The municipal heritage designation includes all the fenced area of cemetery land, and the gravemarkers within it, bounded by private property on three sides and otherwise by the Gut Path.

Heritage Value

The Old Graveyard has been designated a municipal heritage site by the Town of Branch because of its spiritual, historic and aesthetic values.

The Old Graveyard has spiritual value due to its association with the Roman Catholic religion in Branch, by far the predominant religion in this community whose population is of predominately Irish descent.

The Old Graveyard has historic value for its association with Branch’s settlers, and with the Nash family in particular. The family of Thomas Nash, an Irish immigrant who had previously been living on Newfoundland’s Southern Shore, is believed to have been the first settlers at Branch, arriving about 1790, and later donating the land that was used for the community’s first cemetery.

The cemetery has historic value as the oldest known cemetery in Branch, and because it is also purportedly the oldest cemetery in the Cape Shore region of the province. While the earliest death dates appearing on extant headstones at the cemetery is 1857, the cemetery was likely in use before that time, and there are undoubtedly many unmarked graves.

The cemetery also has historic value because its headstones contain historic and genealogical type information, and because they may be considered artifacts.

The Old Graveyard has aesthetic value because its predominantly marble gravemarkers in tablet or column forms are of a material and represent styles typical of the period in which they were produced (circa 1860-1910). These headstones, set in the grassy, fenced land cemetery, are a key element in making the Old Graveyard a distinctive feature in Branch’s cultural landscape.

Source: Town of Branch Regular Council Meeting November 24, 2008.

Character-Defining Elements

Those elements which contribute to the site’s spiritual, historic and aesthetic values, including:

-association with the Roman Catholic religion;
-style, placement and materials of gravemarkers;
-grassy groundcover;
-existence of fencing to contain the site;
-and location of site.